The black cobra is said to be one of the most revered and highly
worshipped snakes in Indian and Hindu mythology.

Though it is thus held in
religious awe, and though we tend instinctually to fear it too, scientific observation confirms what a civilized sort
of snakethe black cobra really is. It tends to shy away from human contact and has the
decency, in ninety percent of cases, even when it bites a human being
who has intruded into its space, not to inject any venom. (Toward rats, however, it is less inclined to demonstrate reserve.)

Clever though the average cobra may be,
this particular hissing Sid who is praising the Buddha-to-be is
evidently smarter than the average cobra. He is evidently not only
fluent in classical Sanskrit and conversant with the rules of
vaṁśasta metre; he is also equipped with the power of reason, and
is even able to weigh up the probabilities of future outcomes.

To express the future outcome he has in mind, Kāla uses the metaphor of enjoyment of a fruit. A more negative metaphor is the bringing down of the whole edifice of suffering. And because every reaction has an equal and opposite reaction, bringing something down is invariably a cause and an effect of something springing up -- hence pratītya-samutpāda, springing up by going back, in which compound the sam- of sam-utpāda means "together." So springing up together, by going back.

Together might mean the whole body and mind, as an integrated unity, springs up. Or together might mean that not only the body and mind of the Buddha sprang up, but also four-legged friends like Kanthaka the horse sprang up together with the Buddha, and legless beings like Kāla the cobra also sprang up -- not to mention the denizens of heaven.

These meanings are suggested to me by the words that Kāla hisses, or growls, in the 1st pāda of today's verse in which he describes the fertile earth as tvac-caraṇāvapīḍitā, "pressed down by your feet," or "pressed down by your footsteps." The principle here might be the principle of wishing one's sitting bones to drill two holes in one's sitting cushion -- not out of any particular hatred for cushions, but based on the truth that every reaction has an equal and opposite reaction. So when my sitting bones are pressing down on the cushion, the cushion is pushing me up. And when the bodhisattva's feet pressed down on the earth, the earth pushed the bodhisattva in the direction of awakening, up.

The flag counter on this blog indicates that the number of visitors has been falling off recently, not that it was ever very high.

At the same time, the price of gold took another tumble yesterday. If the direction of the markets is anything to go by, US stocks and bonds continue to represent good value, whereas physical gold is still too expensive and so further correction is necessary. But I think the markets have been distorted by the effects of central bank money printing and bond buying. The distortion of markets causes misallocation of resources. This is something that has been observable in Japan since the time I lived there during the bubble years of the 1980s. During the bubble in equity and property prices, and the more fundamental bubble in capital investment, it was in vogue to talk of "Japan as Number One." The economic bubble was associated with the inflating of a bubble of Japanese confidence, or arrogance. Since the bursting of the bubble from around 1990, artificially low Japanese interest rates have allowed (a) the survival of, and misallocation of resources to, zombie companies in Japan, (b) a so-called "carry trade" in which investment banks and hedge funds have borrowed money cheaply in yen to make higher-yielding investments in other currencies, like US-dollar denominated stocks.

So I come to the conclusion that there is an awful lot of distortion in the world, not a little of it originating in Japan. Markets are distorted and people's minds are distorted.

Central banks all over the world, but especially the US Federal Reserve Bank, are concerned to prevent a loss of confidence. If we lose confidence in fiat currencies, and especially in the US dollar as the global reserve currency, then the conditions will be in place for a repeating of the history of the Stock Market Crash of 1929, followed by the Great Depression, and the Second World War. So the Fed does whatever it can do to keep inflated a bubble in which markets are distorted and people's minds are distorted.

If people's minds were not so distorted, how could there not be less confidence in paper promises and more reliance on real money, which is physical gold?

Again, if people's minds were not so distorted, how could there not be more interest in mining Aśvaghoṣa's gold?

VOCABULARY

yathā:
ind. in which manner or way , according as , as , like ; as, because,
since